Are 25-year UK mortgages a thing of the past?

New data shows that in the past three years, more than 1m mortgages have been taken out that stretch beyond the current state pension age. Photograph: Nick Gregory/Alamy

For a long time the traditional length of a UK mortgage has been 25 years, but runaway house prices and, more recently, dramatically higher borrowing costs are prompting more and more people to “go long” on their home loans.

On Monday, the former pensions minister Steve Webb revealed that younger homebuyers were increasingly being forced to gamble with their retirement prospects by taking on ultra-long mortgages lasting beyond the end of their working life.